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skade88 writes "Ars is reporting that Blizzard will announce a new game on March 22, 2013 at PAX East. They say the new game is not a sequel or expansion. Blizzard is also saying the new game is not the long rumored MMO named Titan. Considering that every game Blizzard released since 1998 has had the name StarCraft, Warcraft or Diablo in it, this is big news. Ars speculates in the article that the new game could be Blizzard's version of a DOTA game. They showed off Blizzard All-Stars at BlizzCon 2010 as a SC2 custom map. It could be ready for launch as its own standalone game. I guess we will have to wait and see!"

I think you've misunderstood; I'm saying bad game design is a technique used by scalpers like Zynga to force people to pay up. Microtransactions follow bad game design, they don't cause it (except perhaps by choice, at a business model planning level.)

There are a handful of what I consider to be pretty good games that use microtransactions. I think in those cases they adapt the microtransactions to what is inherently a pretty decent game - I don't mind when it's used for custom character graphics or to give players moderately faster access to higher level "stuff."

Of course, you're absolutely right about companies using bad game design as a technique to generate microtransaction income. It really depends on how the game was developed: "We have this coo

Man, this sucks. I remember when I loved Blizzard, but now I can't even get excited about this news, not even a little bit.

I know that this new project, no matter what, will (1) Be always online and require an account and (2) Will have its gameplay heavily influenced, driven, or impacted by a means to make money after the initial ($60!) sale, via micro transactions or a monthly fee or whatever.

Blizzard's next big property will have some after-purchase revenue involved. Guaranteed. Because Blizzard has never shown particular willingness to do something different than other developers and that's what other developers are doing.

And I don't buy it. Expansions have always been a Blizzard thing, and they have worked because they added on to an already complete product. SC2 could have had 10 games worth of Terran content, and it still would have been incomplete because there were no other campaigns.

They are looking into it and hard. They were supposed to add "pay for more maps" functionality in WoL. It's still in coming, but will most likely make a debut some time after HoS release.

I haven't played a single player of actual SC2 multiplayer, but I enjoy playing an occasional multiplayer custom map game and it appears there's a lot of people like me as blizzard added "starcraft arcade" which is the umbrella for all those custom maps in SC2. I fully expect it to become either monthly or pay per map soon

Although each did include a campaign for each race, SC2 Wings of Liberty did have a lot more Terran content than either SC1x campaign had.

yes, they sold it as some kind of groundbreaking storytelling and whatnot, in reality it was 1/3 meat tops, the rest was filler where you do completely unrelated things only to jump into the main storyline 3 missions before ending. And the story sucked ass too.Sc1 offered you a complete balanced package with equal attention to all races, in case of sc2 zerg was clearly undercooked, heart of the swarm is still not out, and when will legacy of the void be released, in 2015? I admit that stretching the game to

What games have they released that haven't been fun? Even Diablo 3 was fun the first time through.

and if you just want a competent RTS without any backstory, there's already 1000's of those. half the attraction of the warcraft and starcraft games are the stories that provide the motivation/reason for the missions

What games have they released that haven't been fun? Even Diablo 3 was fun the first time through.

and if you just want a competent RTS without any backstory, there's already 1000's of those. half the attraction of the warcraft and starcraft games are the stories that provide the motivation/reason for the missions

No way. I played D3 and I was bored out of my mind. It was nothing like it's predecessor.

A new Warcraft RTS, set 5-600 years after current WoW content would be a great lead-in to Warcraft 2. It could be used to set the scene for the next MMO, start development on a story and characters and future bosses. And it wouldn't be too hard to create make it so that your previous character could be part of your prologue as the great hero who slew whatever. If you see how your character generation in GW2 goes, the ability to pick a previous character and it will look up some feats of strength, be them Pv

Spend real money to buy things to wave your dick around on the forums. Complete with full public profiles so others can see how much money you actually spent.

Cool features like:- Call people noobs for not spending as much money as you have- Spend money instead of actually playing the game- Spend money to acquire virtual currency that Blizzard owns- Spend money to super-inflate the in-game economy so if you want something later, you have to spend more money

Spend real money to buy things to wave your dick around on the forums. Complete with full public profiles so others can see how much money you actually spent.

Cool features like:- Call people noobs for not spending as much money as you have- Spend money instead of actually playing the game- Spend money to acquire virtual currency that Blizzard owns- Spend money to super-inflate the in-game economy so if you want something later, you have to spend more money

It will be microtransaction based MMO and, in order to get a good initial population, the will offer existing WoW players an opportunity to SELL their WoW accounts for a head start in the microtransaction economy of the new game. The net worth of your WoW account will be based on things like how many achievements, what item level, how many alts and what level they are. Thus 'end game' players in WoW will be able to effectively start playing the new game at 'end game'.

From what I can gather you have two or more teams, each with their own base, all trying to capture points from the other teams all the while your own teammates keep yelling obscenities at you because you're not doing this or that exactly how they want, and it ends with one or the other team capturing enough points, wiping the other one out, or the players getting fed up with the constant abuse by own teammates and logging out. But really, the constant raging, belittling and abusing of own teammates is seemingly the most important thing in these games.

Good guess but I heard it will consist of a slot machine. You earn slot tokens by moving a cursor around the screen for 1 hr per token. Each token has a tiny chance of increasing your power rating by 1 point. You can then walk around the game with your rating flashing over your head.

You can do group tasks where you all work together to move the cursor for 2 tokens per hour but then they scream "retard!!!" at you while you do it.

DOTA = Defense of the Ancients, the most popular custom map in Warcraft III. It spawned the MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) genre in which players control a single hero unit from a third-person perspective while leveling/gearing up in an attempt to destroy the opponent team's base, and which now has a number of entries in it, the most notable being League of Legends. DOTA is so well known and popular that Valve even hired IceFrog, one of DOTA's lead developers, to create "DOTA 2" as a standalone game that is currently in beta (and is already the second most popular eSport title, behind only StarCraft II).

I saw DOTA but thought DOTT (Day of the Tentacle). Man, that was a good game back in the day. I'm not sure how I would feel about a remake, but I'd probably still buy it though. I have no interest in DOTA, though, so Blizzard won't be getting my money if that's what they'll be announcing...

Nice and informative, but a bit confusing. LoL, an eSport title, is about four times larger (# of players) than Dota 2. Can you explain why you count Starcraft 2 and Dota 2 as the top two e-Sport titles, yet do not include the 'most notable' Leage of Legends?

(Disclaimer: I play Dota 2, and not LoL; I am not a LoL fanboy, just curious about the appearant contradiction)

Seriously, I mean, I'm used to vaporware and whatnot, but this is getting ridiculous. Are we now supposed to get excited over the announcement of getting "something", they can't even be assed anymore to at least announce it?

How 'bout an ARG where you use micro-transactions to learn WTF Blizz intends to announce, so you don't have to masturbate yourself up to the frenzy of anticipation and excitement their marketing department clearly expects you to have.

Seriously, has Vivendi's ownership of Blizz yielded ONE positive result?

Blizzard has become the J.J. Abrams of game developers in the last couple years. Nothing they do is risky or ambitious. As a result Diablo 3 turned into a snoozefest with no new mechanics and a loot system that was less exciting than its predecessor. They showed they can't break away from core mechanics in Starcraft 2 that were terrible for the multiplayer scene. If they were to make a DotA style game at this point, I would give an absolute vote of no confidence in their ability to turn it into a quality competitive game. Sure it'll look pretty and it'll run smooth. It'll either be well balanced and boring as hell or broken beyond all belief. They'll ignore player feedback and commit themselves to horrible design decisions.

The thing I dislike most about Blizzard right now is that they seem to think that they have bottled the formula for fun. They think that they have a perfect statistical method for determining balance while completely ignoring how their games are actually being played. What they've actually bottled is the perfect formula for average clones of prior success. So not really all that excited.

Eve should hire Blizzard developers to come in and revamp the UI. Maybe it's because Eve has a lot of information to present, but as fun as the game is the UI sucks. Far too menu driven especially when you're combat.

WoW's auction house is probably the weakest part of their UI and it's still infinitely better the Eve's tiny menus and their crappy filtering options. The information icon scheme sucks as does their comparison UI. You spend tons of time trying to find information in Eve.

I know it's popular to slam a game that probably still has 10 million subscribers, but let's not rewrite history.

They take a good game and mess it up. Wonder what they will be doing this time

I'm not sure which game you're referring to? 10 million subscribers still for World of Warcraft. Diablo 3 top selling game of the year sold 12 million copies. You may not appreciate their work but obviously someone does.

I'll say now that I'm not buying it. Then again, I say I'm cancelling my WoW account and never returning. Only, in four months I renew, level to 45, get bored, and quit again. I do this three times a year. Diablo 3, told myself I wasn't going to bother. Week after release, I bought it. Blizzard always seems to sucker me into their games. No matter how often I tell myself I'm not playing, I come back. >.
Certainly has my attention as to what the game could be though.

I'm finished with Blizzard. After the giant pile of diarrhea that was Cataclysm they decide to fix it with Pandas and Pokemon. Then we get a Starcraft sequel we waited years for that played the same as the first while being split into 3 games to make more money for Activision. Then there was Diablo 3 which was a worse game than it's predecessors and now we find out that they were blowing smoke up our asses by being a PC only company then cripple a flagship IP with a game that was killed by consolitis.

Yeah, There is a lot of hype around DOTA 2 but I figured it wasn't meeting Valve's expectation when they started handing out multiple copies to anybody who had ever shown an interest. I had already purchased a copy and they gave me and my son's account 4 more each to hand out to friends.

It was planned as a free-to-play game with cosmetic microtransactions. The whole point is to get as many people interested in it and playing as possible. The $30 you can spend for it is "early-access" for anyone that somehow can't get an invite. Look at the number of people playing it on a typical day - it usually peaks at over 200k simultaneous players.

Dota 2 and LoL are very different games within the same genre. LoL is a much simpler and more streamlined version of the genre, which of course appeals to a wider audience. Dota 2 is primarily for players of the original and Heroes of Newerth. The mechanics are more robust and the learning curve is much steeper.